Early Access Fraudsters: Shady Developer Lord Kres Is Still Shady

May 15th, 2017 Connor

(Editor’s Note: You may notice that this article makes no use of screenshots from the game Voxelized and only utilizes third party Youtube videos. This is rare, but we do it to mitigate any potential frivolous take down requests being sent to our host over use of copyrighted material. Enjoy.)

Steam Developer Lord Kres is a con artist who by all means should already be barred from ever selling a video game on Steam again. When it comes to writing an Early Access or Crowfunding Fraudster column, I do so with a level of grace and caution. As I regularly reinforce, many of the subjects are people who are merely in over their heads, independent developers with a vision and neither the experience nor the finances to see it through to completion, enthusiastic gamers who think that they can crowdfund money to bribe a developer into creating a sequel, or seasoned veterans who start campaigns knowing that the funds are not enough to see the project through to completion.

In the case of Lord Kres, we are dealing with a shady name that has already been punished once by Valve for blatantly defrauding customers. Let’s talk about that.

The subject of our backstory is Journey of the Light, a title released in 2015 under the promise that the game would be incredibly difficult. The Dark Souls of puzzle games, if you will, but cranked up to a thousand because the puzzles turned out to be so difficult that nobody was able to finish the first level. Not a single person, aside from the developer himself. Now that’s hardcore gaming! Suspecting that something was up, a few intrepid sleuths took a look at the game’s code and came up with a fantastic reason why not a single person had been able to pass the first trial: The game was designed to be unbeatable.

Oh and the last six levels of this seven level game didn’t actually exist. At all. It was a real life Xantar from Wayne’s World.

In his defense, Lord Kres claimed that the levels did exist and were accidentally removed from the game due to a bug added in a then-recent patch, an excuse that sits just above blaming the two armed man in terms of believability, or Kres’ subsequent claims of being sick to avoid answering questions. In case you’re wondering whether Kres then turned around and immediately patched those levels back into the game, like he would if he had been telling the truth, he didn’t. Instead, Valve opened Journey of the Lightup for refunds regardless of time played and removed the game from the Steam store. Incidentally, the soundtrack is still shown on the store, but you can’t buy it.

One thing that can be said about Lord Kres is that the guy is crafty. According to numerous forum posts, users were told that hints to completing the first level were hidden within the game’s trading cards. Those cards are useless in completing the puzzles, and (according to user reports) conveniently don’t drop until after two hours of gameplay, the general limit for Steam’s refund policy. Clever girl.

What is still on sale on Steam from Lord Kres is Voxelized, a prototype with virtually zero content. Voxelized started out as a low quality Minecraft clone, as seen in the video below:

It later evolved into a not-as-low but still low quality Minecraft clone with a lot of bloom and using Unreal assets.

And most recently, the game has transformed into an Unreal engine asset flip with no gameplay.

Eagle eyed viewers might be under the impression that Lord Kres has no vision for this prototype game that he is selling on Steam in Early Access, and if you hold this opinion then you’re probably right. As laid out in the mission plan, Kres wants a fully fleshed out world with some animals maybe? I don’t know, some guns, whatever. Let him know what you want and he’ll probably put it in.

Maybe you would want to see some animals?

Maybe some Guns, Swords or Armors?
Let me know what you want.

I am also planning a Full Control Support

And Full HDM Support (Head Mounted Display)
Workshop is a planned feature

It’s important to note that Voxelized has been on the Steam store for two years, since March 19, 2015 to be precise, before being changed to the content-void Minecraft prototype into the content-void Unreal asset flip. Naturally this has left some of the buyers pretty annoyed, to which an alleged moderator showed up on one critic’s Steam page to tell him to kill himself. Unsurprisingly there have been numerous reports of people being banned off of the Steam forums for writing negative reviews or critiquing the title.

So here’s where we stand: Lord Kres is an established fraudster who had previously attempted to pull a con job by selling a game as finished while secretly making it unbeatable and then making up excuses as to why the levels weren’t in the game. Despite this, Valve is still allowing him to sell a prototype that has radically shifted in a different direction, two years after entering Early Access, and despite having no content describing itself as “fully playable.”

The game in it´s current state is fully playable and the features still in development do not affect to the gameplay. Main reason for adding Voxelized on Steam in Early Access:

Just as a side note, you have to appreciate that the game is still called Voxelized when there doesn’t seem to be anything voxel-related in the game.

With luck, either Valve will put this game to bed where it belongs (sleeping in a coffin six feet under) or the constant negative reviews will contribute to Steam’s algorithms burying this title into the nether regions where nobody will find it. Or hey, maybe MMO Fallout should open up a publishing wing, buy the assets, and make a game that isn’t completely muck. It’s always worth considering.